Substance Notes

Substance Notes

Universal/Archetypal Characters

• Epic Hero: Harry Potter
• Tragic Hero: Caesar, Mufasa
• Byronic Hero: Edward Cullen, Mr. Darcy, Sherlock
• AntiHero: Deadpool, Gru, Draco Malfoy
• Outcast: Belle, Mae, Annie
• Scapegoat: Shrek
• Stranger in the Village: Gandalf, Hester Prynne

Universal/Archetypal Women

• Earth mother: Terfiti
• temptress: Jessica Rabbit
• soul-mate: Romeo/Juliet
• platonic ideal: Dante and Beatrice
• maiden: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel
• mother: Mrs. Weasley
• crone: Wicked Witch, Dolores Umbridge

Universal/Archetypal Images

• Colors: Red-anger, White-Purity, Purple-Royalty, Blue-Sadness
• Numbers: 3-Trinity, 7
• Water: Baptism
• Yin and Yang (Juxtaposition):
• Nature and Garden:
• Tree: Giving Tree

Universal/Archetypal Plots

• Coming-of-Age (Bildungsroman): Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Mistaken Identity/Farce:Huck Finn
• Renewal of Life: Picture of Dorian Gray
• Quest/Journey: The Hobbit
• Spiritual epiphany: If I stay, The Circle, Life of Pi
• Stranger in the Village: Footloose
• Outcast:

Novel Types You Should Know

• Bildungsroman: Their Eyes Were Watching God, To Kill a Mockingbird
• Dystopian: The Road
• Utopian: A perfect society
• Epistolary: Letters
• Gothic: Edgar Allen Poe
• Historical: Night
• Novella:Dante's Inferno
• Novel of manners: Jane Austin
• Social novel: The Scarlet Letter

Poem Types You Should Know

• ode: tribute to something
• elegy: Tribute to something dead
• lyric: short rhyming metrical piece
• sonnet: 14 line poems, look like a square- Shakespeare

Gender, Race, and Class as Contemporary “Outcast” or “Identity” Themes

• Gender: Scarlet Letter
• Race: Huck Finn
• Class: Gatsby

Other Important Theme Categories:

• Identity:Their Eyes
• Memory: The Giver
• Good and Evil: Harry Potter
• Love: The Notebook
• Religion: Their Eyes
• Family: Lion King, A tale of two cities
• Personal Responsibility: Death of a Salesman
• Reality: Life of Pi
• Sanity: Silence of the Lambs
• Carpe Diem: The Fault in Our Stars
• Pastoral: The Bible

Exploring Literary Substance Through Time Periods:

• Renaissance: Midsummer's nights dream, Hamlet (God, nature of art, society)
• Enlightenment: (Society, manners, rules, also science)
• Romanticism: The Scarlet Letter, Longfellow
• Victorian Era: Jane Austin, Dickens
• Gothicism: Poe
• Realism: Accurate depiction of day to day life, Huck Finn
• Modern Realism: A Doll's House, Master Builder
• Modernism: T.S. Elliot, Cats Poetry, disillusionment, Virginia Wolfe
• Magical Realism:
• Postmodernism: Tim O'brien
• Existentialism: Life has no meaning except the meaning that you make
• Absurdism: The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, There is no meaning, stop trying to create a meaning, Waiting for Godot, Alice in Wonderland!